Our page for the other Orpheum at 301 Collinsville says that it was originally called the Lyric and was renamed the Orpheum in 1929 and closed in 1936. This theater’s description says that it was called the Lyric in 1924 and renamed the New Orpheum in 1929. They can’t both have been called the Lyric at the same time and then renamed the Orpheum at the same time. Something is wrong in one or both descriptions, but I can’t figure out exactly what.
The 1912 City Directory has the Lyric Theatre at 301-303 Collinsville and the Majestic at 242 Collinsville. I haven’t found any later city directories for East St. Louis.
It can be tricky calculating the locations of Atlanta’s theaters from their old addresses. The part of Whitehall Street on which the Alamo Theatre was located was renamed to be part of Peachtree Street at some point.
A 1911 Sanborn Map shows the building at 71 Whitehall Street was an ordinary commercial structure on the west side of the street three doors south of Hunter Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.) The Alamo Theatre was probably a storefront nickelodeon installed in the space sometime after that year. I believe the building might still be standing at modern address 101 Peachtree Street SW, which is occupied by the Blend Master Barber Shop in the current Google street view, but I’m not positive that it wasn’t under the footprint of the modern brick building extending south from the corner of MLK Drive.
It can be tricky calculating the locations of Atlanta’s theaters from their old addresses. The part of Whitehall Street on which the Alpha Theatre was located was renamed to be part of Peachtree Street at some point.
A 1911 Sanborn map has 148 Whitehall on the east side of the street just south of Trinity Street, and the lot 144-148 was then occupied by a large house with a big yard, so the theater hadn’t been built yet, but it had been by February, 1916 (advertisement cited by kencmcintyre.) The modern address would be approximately 182 Peachtree Street SW. There is now a parking lot extending from Trinity Street to the building at modern 196 Peachtree.
Some early Sanborn maps of Georgia cities are online at this link.
An item in the April 18, 1914, issue of The American Contractor also concerns the Empress Theatre, and gives the address of the site as 410 Jackson Street. Because the addresses are so close, and could easily have been shifted, I’m wondering if the Empress was the same house as the Hollywood Theatre, which we have listed at 420 Jackson Street.
This item from the April 18, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World was probably about the Empress Theatre:
“Sioux City, Ia. — Sealed proposals have been invited by John Biegger, care
Colonial Theater, for the erection of the New Empress Theater and office building. Joseph Schwarz is the architect.”
The magazine was a bit late with its announcement. The March 30 issue of the Sioux City Journal had said that ground had been broken for the theater the previous day. It was to be a Sullivan & Considine vaudeville house, and Mr. Biegger expected to convert his Colonial Theatre into a movie house when the Empress opened.
There was a house called the Central Theatre operating in Danville at least as early as 1914, when it was mentioned in the May 23 issue of The Moving Picture World:
“I. C. Davidson, owner of the Central Theater, Danville, was also seen during the Springfield convention. He informed me that the present capacity of the Central is 580, and that he is putting in a balcony that will seat 400 more. He reported excellent business, and expressed great faith in the future of the moving picture.”
A paper about theaters on North Avenue (PDF here) says that the Aurora Theatre was opened by the Paradise Amusement Company in the fall of 1910. That means it must be the house referred to by this item from The Moving Picture World of April 2, 1910:
“Baltimore, Md. — Architect Francis E. Tormey has completed plans for a moving picture theater to be erected on the south side of North avenue, near Charles street, by the Paradise Amusement Co.”
Tormey designed a number of churches during his career, and now two of his theaters- this house and the New Horn Theatre- have also become churches.
The Grand Theatre at 400 E. Baltimore was opened around 1908 by Pearce & Schenck. Three theaters of the same name all operating at the same time could have been rather confusing, but they probably each drew their patrons primarily from nearby neighborhoods.
A permit to convert the ground floor of the building at 509-513 S. Broadway into a movie and vaudeville theater was granted to the Broadway Theatre Company on October 16, 1913. According to Robert Kirk Headley’s Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore: An Illustrated History and Directory of Theaters, 1895-2004, the architect for the conversion was Alfred Lowther Forrest.
Robert Kirk Headley’s Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore : An Illustrated History and Directory of Theaters, 1895-2004 says that Alfred Lowther Forrest was both the original architect of the Victoria Theatre in 1908 and the architect for its rebuilding in 1922.
The January 8, 1910, issue of The Moving Picture World featured this brief article about the Victoria Theatre:
“PEARCE & SCHECK’S VICTORIA THEATER, BALTIMORE, MD.
“From an artistic standpoint the Victoria Theater
is one of the handsomest theaters in the country.
There are two floors — main floor and balcony — filled
with comfortable chairs and eight beautifully decorated boxes. It is of unusually solid construction
and elaborately adorned both inside and out. On the top of the building sits an enormous plaster figure that easily attracts the glance of the passerby. The auditorium and stage are fitted up with many modern conveniences. The decorations of both exterior and interior are handsome, the scheme being terra-cotta and dark green. Much additional beauty is procured by the lavish use of hundreds of electric lights. The house was designed by A. Lowther Forrest, architect. It is very commodious, having a seating capacity of 1,500, and is equipped with an unusually large stage. Mass & Co. were the builders and Henry L. Arntz was the decorator.”
London-born architect Alfred Lowther Forrest (1861-1951) designed more than a dozen theaters, most of them in Baltimore.
The February 1, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World reported that the Nickelette Theatre at 416 Lackawanna Avenue in Scranton had been destroyed by a fire on January 18. The Nickelet Theatre operating at 406 Lackawanna in March that year could have been the same business moved to a new location. The old location was demolished.
An announcement in the May 13, 1908, issue of The Scranton Truth advertised the opening that day of the 300-seat Hippodrome Theatre, newly built “…where the old Nickelette stood, before the building was destroyed by fire, right opposite Jonas Long’s Sons department store on Lackawanna avenue….”
By October, 1908, there was a Nickelet Theatre located on Penn Avenue, and there was also a World Nickelet at 210 Main Avenue, both mentioned in one issue of the Truth. In 1912, a Nickelet Theatre in Scranton was dismantled, but I don’t know which Nickelet it was. I’ve also found houses called the Nickelet (or Nickelette) Theatre in Allentown, Stroudsburg, and Ashley, and a Unity Nickelet in Archibald, Pennsylvania, operating during this period.
The Roosevelt was one of three theaters in LaVilla, the historically African-American neighborhood adjacent to downtown Jacksonville. The other theaters were the Strand and the Ritz. The neighborhood went into decline in the 1960s and what remained was largely eradicated by an urban renewal project undertaken in the 1990s.
The block of Ashley Street on which the Roosevelt Theatre was located has been absorbed into the campus of the LaVilla Middle School of the Arts, a Duvall County Public Schools magnet school.
The 700 and 800 blocks of W. Ashley Street are now part of the campus of the LaVilla Middle School of the Arts. The Strand was one of three theaters serving the African-American neighborhood of LaVilla, which is now mostly gone. The Strand Theatre was also demolished for the school project, while the Ritz was partly demolished and rebuilt behind its historic front.
This item from the May 23, 1914, issue of The American Contractor might be about the Pastime Theatre:
Berea, O.—Motion Picture Theater, Store & Apartment Bldg.: 2 & 1 sty. 114x33. Archts. Richardson & Yost, 354 Rockefeller bldg., Cleveland. Owner John Martin, Berea. Archts. and owner taking bids.“
The size of the building and the timing of its construction are right, but I haven’t found any other references to a John Martin owning a theater in Berea.
Scott Neff asked if this theater ever had a sign displaying its name when it was the Strand. This PDF file has a photo of the house with the name Strand prominently displayed on the marquee. The caption dates the photo to 1915, but it has to be later. The truck and partial auto visible date from the 1920s.
The name Strand also appears on a sign above the doors in the ca.1917 photo I uploaded to the photo section a few months ago, but it’s partly hidden by the flag, and is barely readable in any case. Both photos show some of the architectural detail that was part of Albert Cornelius’s original 1914 design, most of which was probably removed in Alexander Cantin’s 1940s remodeling, but perhaps even earlier.
The 400-seat Sequoia Theatre that was listed in the 1926 FDY was not this house, but the one downtown on K Street which later became the Sierra Theatre and finally the State Theatre.
In 1926 this stretch of Franklin Boulevard was probably still lined with bean fields. CinemaTour lists the Sequoia/Center Theatre on Franklin Boulevard as having opened in 1949. I see no reason to doubt it. The Sequoia is listed in the 1950 FDY with 900 seats.
This 1913 photo shows the Sequoia Theatre on the ground floor of the Sequoia Hotel building. This 1927 photo of K Street shows the Sequoia Theatre at right. The house had become the Sierra Theatre by the time this photo was made in August, 1932.
The earliest mention of Warwood I’ve found in the trade publications is this item from the February 1, 1913, issue of Motography, which is about a proposed theater two blocks up Warwood Avenue from the Gem’s location:
“Considerable inquiry is being made by citizens of Warwood relative to the time of erecting the building to be used as a nickelodeon, at the corner of Twenty-first and Main streets. C. D. Thompson, of Wheeling, who represents the company which proposes to establish the moving picture show stated, in answer to an inquiry, that work on the building will be commenced shortly after the first of the coming year, and it is expected to open the show for business next spring.”
The item was obviously written quite some time before being published, and I don’t think Mr. Thompson completed the project. However, the Gem must have opened in 1913, as a theater in Warwood is mentioned in the January 10, 1914, issue of Motography:
“L. H. Hoffman will soon begin to enlarge his motion picture theater on Main street, Warwood. This is the only theater in the town and many people are turned away every evening because the place is too small.”
The first mention of the Gem by name appears in the February 21, 1914, issue of the same publication:
“The improvements which were made to the Gem picture house at Warwood are about completed.”
There was a house called the Warwood Theatre in Wheeling, probably in the Warwood district, at least as early as 1918. This item is from the January 6, 1919, issue of The Film Daily:
“Wheeling, W. Va — The Warwood theater reopened Dec. 28th after a shut down of eight weeks due to the epidemic.”
This is the only mention of the house I’ve found. The only theater listed at Warwood in the 1926 FDY is the Patterson, with no seating capacity given, and from 1927 on there is only the 300-seat Lincoln Theatre. I don’t know if Warwood Theater was later name for the Gem or was a different theater.
This page at Historic Indianapolis features a 1941 Baist Real Estate Atlas map showing the wedge-shaped St. Clair Theatre building. There is also a photo of a 1946 traffic accident with the theater in the background.
Michael J. Duffecy originally operated the St. Clair Theatre. The November 22, 1923, issue of the Indianapolis News said that Duffecy would open the St. Clair Theatre on Saturday (November 24.)
On March 5, 1924, Variety said that Duffecy had sold the St. Clair and Oriental Theatres at Indianapolis to Joseph F. Smith. The St. Clair had been open for only a few months. Duffecy had operated the Oriental Theatre since 1918.
Some earlier references to Duffecy in the newspapers indicate that he was a saloon keeper in the early 20th century. Perhaps the prospect of prohibition drove him into the movie business.
This page at HistoryLink says the Crystal, Ballard, and Tivoli Theatres were all operating in Ballard by 1910, but only the Ballard Theatre operated through World War I.
The Junction Building, in which the Crystal Theatre was located, is still standing at 5200-5210 Ballard Avenue. So far I’ve found no references to the Idle Hour Theatre other than the one in MPW in 1916, no references to the Bat Theatre other than the one in Pheasant-Albright’s book, and no references to the Tivoli other than the one at HistoryLink.
Julie D. Pheasant-Albright’s book Early Ballard mentions seven theaters in Ballard: the Bagdad, of course, and the Majestic (on what is now the site of the Majestic Bay Theatre) plus five vanished houses; the Crystal, in the Junction Building; the Bat, on the corner of 63rd Street and 14th Avenue NW; the Empress, at the corner of Market and Tallman Avenue; the Woodland, on 65th Street and 6th Avenue NW; and the Ballard, near the corner of Ballard Avenue and Ione Street. Years of operation are not given.
Our page for the other Orpheum at 301 Collinsville says that it was originally called the Lyric and was renamed the Orpheum in 1929 and closed in 1936. This theater’s description says that it was called the Lyric in 1924 and renamed the New Orpheum in 1929. They can’t both have been called the Lyric at the same time and then renamed the Orpheum at the same time. Something is wrong in one or both descriptions, but I can’t figure out exactly what.
The 1912 City Directory has the Lyric Theatre at 301-303 Collinsville and the Majestic at 242 Collinsville. I haven’t found any later city directories for East St. Louis.
The 1912 East St. Louis City Directory has a theater listing for a Home Circle Airdome, but it is at 940 Trendley Avenue.
The Avenue Theatre was listed at 219 Collinsville Avenue in the 1912 East St. Louis City Directory.
It can be tricky calculating the locations of Atlanta’s theaters from their old addresses. The part of Whitehall Street on which the Alamo Theatre was located was renamed to be part of Peachtree Street at some point.
A 1911 Sanborn Map shows the building at 71 Whitehall Street was an ordinary commercial structure on the west side of the street three doors south of Hunter Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.) The Alamo Theatre was probably a storefront nickelodeon installed in the space sometime after that year. I believe the building might still be standing at modern address 101 Peachtree Street SW, which is occupied by the Blend Master Barber Shop in the current Google street view, but I’m not positive that it wasn’t under the footprint of the modern brick building extending south from the corner of MLK Drive.
It can be tricky calculating the locations of Atlanta’s theaters from their old addresses. The part of Whitehall Street on which the Alpha Theatre was located was renamed to be part of Peachtree Street at some point.
A 1911 Sanborn map has 148 Whitehall on the east side of the street just south of Trinity Street, and the lot 144-148 was then occupied by a large house with a big yard, so the theater hadn’t been built yet, but it had been by February, 1916 (advertisement cited by kencmcintyre.) The modern address would be approximately 182 Peachtree Street SW. There is now a parking lot extending from Trinity Street to the building at modern 196 Peachtree.
Some early Sanborn maps of Georgia cities are online at this link.
An item in the April 18, 1914, issue of The American Contractor also concerns the Empress Theatre, and gives the address of the site as 410 Jackson Street. Because the addresses are so close, and could easily have been shifted, I’m wondering if the Empress was the same house as the Hollywood Theatre, which we have listed at 420 Jackson Street.
This item from the April 18, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World was probably about the Empress Theatre:
The magazine was a bit late with its announcement. The March 30 issue of the Sioux City Journal had said that ground had been broken for the theater the previous day. It was to be a Sullivan & Considine vaudeville house, and Mr. Biegger expected to convert his Colonial Theatre into a movie house when the Empress opened.There was a house called the Central Theatre operating in Danville at least as early as 1914, when it was mentioned in the May 23 issue of The Moving Picture World:
A paper about theaters on North Avenue (PDF here) says that the Aurora Theatre was opened by the Paradise Amusement Company in the fall of 1910. That means it must be the house referred to by this item from The Moving Picture World of April 2, 1910:
Tormey designed a number of churches during his career, and now two of his theaters- this house and the New Horn Theatre- have also become churches.The Grand Theatre at 400 E. Baltimore was opened around 1908 by Pearce & Schenck. Three theaters of the same name all operating at the same time could have been rather confusing, but they probably each drew their patrons primarily from nearby neighborhoods.
A permit to convert the ground floor of the building at 509-513 S. Broadway into a movie and vaudeville theater was granted to the Broadway Theatre Company on October 16, 1913. According to Robert Kirk Headley’s Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore: An Illustrated History and Directory of Theaters, 1895-2004, the architect for the conversion was Alfred Lowther Forrest.
Robert Kirk Headley’s Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore : An Illustrated History and Directory of Theaters, 1895-2004 says that Alfred Lowther Forrest was both the original architect of the Victoria Theatre in 1908 and the architect for its rebuilding in 1922.
The January 8, 1910, issue of The Moving Picture World featured this brief article about the Victoria Theatre:
London-born architect Alfred Lowther Forrest (1861-1951) designed more than a dozen theaters, most of them in Baltimore.The February 1, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World reported that the Nickelette Theatre at 416 Lackawanna Avenue in Scranton had been destroyed by a fire on January 18. The Nickelet Theatre operating at 406 Lackawanna in March that year could have been the same business moved to a new location. The old location was demolished.
An announcement in the May 13, 1908, issue of The Scranton Truth advertised the opening that day of the 300-seat Hippodrome Theatre, newly built “…where the old Nickelette stood, before the building was destroyed by fire, right opposite Jonas Long’s Sons department store on Lackawanna avenue….”
By October, 1908, there was a Nickelet Theatre located on Penn Avenue, and there was also a World Nickelet at 210 Main Avenue, both mentioned in one issue of the Truth. In 1912, a Nickelet Theatre in Scranton was dismantled, but I don’t know which Nickelet it was. I’ve also found houses called the Nickelet (or Nickelette) Theatre in Allentown, Stroudsburg, and Ashley, and a Unity Nickelet in Archibald, Pennsylvania, operating during this period.
The Roosevelt was one of three theaters in LaVilla, the historically African-American neighborhood adjacent to downtown Jacksonville. The other theaters were the Strand and the Ritz. The neighborhood went into decline in the 1960s and what remained was largely eradicated by an urban renewal project undertaken in the 1990s.
The block of Ashley Street on which the Roosevelt Theatre was located has been absorbed into the campus of the LaVilla Middle School of the Arts, a Duvall County Public Schools magnet school.
The 700 and 800 blocks of W. Ashley Street are now part of the campus of the LaVilla Middle School of the Arts. The Strand was one of three theaters serving the African-American neighborhood of LaVilla, which is now mostly gone. The Strand Theatre was also demolished for the school project, while the Ritz was partly demolished and rebuilt behind its historic front.
This item from the May 23, 1914, issue of The American Contractor might be about the Pastime Theatre:
The size of the building and the timing of its construction are right, but I haven’t found any other references to a John Martin owning a theater in Berea.Scott Neff asked if this theater ever had a sign displaying its name when it was the Strand. This PDF file has a photo of the house with the name Strand prominently displayed on the marquee. The caption dates the photo to 1915, but it has to be later. The truck and partial auto visible date from the 1920s.
The name Strand also appears on a sign above the doors in the ca.1917 photo I uploaded to the photo section a few months ago, but it’s partly hidden by the flag, and is barely readable in any case. Both photos show some of the architectural detail that was part of Albert Cornelius’s original 1914 design, most of which was probably removed in Alexander Cantin’s 1940s remodeling, but perhaps even earlier.
The 400-seat Sequoia Theatre that was listed in the 1926 FDY was not this house, but the one downtown on K Street which later became the Sierra Theatre and finally the State Theatre.
In 1926 this stretch of Franklin Boulevard was probably still lined with bean fields. CinemaTour lists the Sequoia/Center Theatre on Franklin Boulevard as having opened in 1949. I see no reason to doubt it. The Sequoia is listed in the 1950 FDY with 900 seats.
This 1913 photo shows the Sequoia Theatre on the ground floor of the Sequoia Hotel building. This 1927 photo of K Street shows the Sequoia Theatre at right. The house had become the Sierra Theatre by the time this photo was made in August, 1932.
The earliest mention of Warwood I’ve found in the trade publications is this item from the February 1, 1913, issue of Motography, which is about a proposed theater two blocks up Warwood Avenue from the Gem’s location:
The item was obviously written quite some time before being published, and I don’t think Mr. Thompson completed the project. However, the Gem must have opened in 1913, as a theater in Warwood is mentioned in the January 10, 1914, issue of Motography:The first mention of the Gem by name appears in the February 21, 1914, issue of the same publication:There was a house called the Warwood Theatre in Wheeling, probably in the Warwood district, at least as early as 1918. This item is from the January 6, 1919, issue of The Film Daily:This is the only mention of the house I’ve found. The only theater listed at Warwood in the 1926 FDY is the Patterson, with no seating capacity given, and from 1927 on there is only the 300-seat Lincoln Theatre. I don’t know if Warwood Theater was later name for the Gem or was a different theater.The November 10, 1921, issue of Manufacturers Record has this item: “W. Va., Wheeling- W. H. Morgan will erect $24,000 theater on 17th St., Warwood.”
This page at Historic Indianapolis features a 1941 Baist Real Estate Atlas map showing the wedge-shaped St. Clair Theatre building. There is also a photo of a 1946 traffic accident with the theater in the background.
Michael J. Duffecy originally operated the St. Clair Theatre. The November 22, 1923, issue of the Indianapolis News said that Duffecy would open the St. Clair Theatre on Saturday (November 24.)
On March 5, 1924, Variety said that Duffecy had sold the St. Clair and Oriental Theatres at Indianapolis to Joseph F. Smith. The St. Clair had been open for only a few months. Duffecy had operated the Oriental Theatre since 1918.
Some earlier references to Duffecy in the newspapers indicate that he was a saloon keeper in the early 20th century. Perhaps the prospect of prohibition drove him into the movie business.
This page at HistoryLink says the Crystal, Ballard, and Tivoli Theatres were all operating in Ballard by 1910, but only the Ballard Theatre operated through World War I.
The Junction Building, in which the Crystal Theatre was located, is still standing at 5200-5210 Ballard Avenue. So far I’ve found no references to the Idle Hour Theatre other than the one in MPW in 1916, no references to the Bat Theatre other than the one in Pheasant-Albright’s book, and no references to the Tivoli other than the one at HistoryLink.
Julie D. Pheasant-Albright’s book Early Ballard mentions seven theaters in Ballard: the Bagdad, of course, and the Majestic (on what is now the site of the Majestic Bay Theatre) plus five vanished houses; the Crystal, in the Junction Building; the Bat, on the corner of 63rd Street and 14th Avenue NW; the Empress, at the corner of Market and Tallman Avenue; the Woodland, on 65th Street and 6th Avenue NW; and the Ballard, near the corner of Ballard Avenue and Ione Street. Years of operation are not given.